Dr. Sheldon Berman, having been a superintendent across 28 school years, is currently the Co-chair of the Special Olympics National Education Leadership Network and Lead Superintendent for Social-Emotional Learning for AASA, The School Superintendents Association. He was a member of the Council of Distinguished Educators of the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development and primary author of the Commission’s practice reports. Prior to his service as superintendent, he was one of the founders and President of Educators for Social Responsibility.
In this time of significant divisiveness across our country, we are painfully aware that schools are not immune from reflections of the ugliness that permeates our cultural and political climate. We witness and experience hurtful and sometimes vicious acts of bullying and other intolerance occurring among youth, often aided by social media and sometimes rising to the level of violence, and we feel compelled to mount a counteroffensive. But how?
We know from experience that when K-12 school environments are structured and operated in a manner that is inclusive, they create a sense of safety and belonging. These environments offer multiple settings—classrooms, cafeterias, hallways, playgrounds, and buses—where all students can feel known, valued, and supported in their learning and in their identity. Inclusion, in fact, is vital to student learning, performance, mental health, and physical safety. Fortunately, there is already a national movement that effectively meets this need as it exemplifies and demonstrates the power of inclusion—the Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools® (UCS) program.
For a remarkable 56 years, Special Olympics has used sport to break down barriers standing in the way of children and adults with intellectual disabilities (ID), enabling them to build self-confidence while promoting social acceptance through sporting events of every kind. But that is only the first part of the story. Over the past 16 years, Special Olympics has expanded its original mission by building a bridge that extends inclusion from the athletic field right into the schoolhouse. The impact has been remarkable.
In schools that adopt the UCS model, inclusion is celebrated schoolwide. Individuals with and without ID interact together in sports, extracurricular activities, leadership opportunities, and whole-school activities. Teachers, administrators, coaches, and other staff open their doors, their hearts, and their minds so that all students can interact together.
Young people with and without ID—learning, playing, and thriving together—is what “Unified” means. In schools with Unified programming, students with ID are welcomed and encouraged to compete on the same sports teams, join student clubs, and become youth leaders. Everyone is seen as a person of value, someone who can make a meaningful contribution to the effort at hand.
Compared with typically developing children, young people with ID are three times more likely to experience isolation, marginalization, divisiveness, bullying, and expressions of hatred and rejection, both in and out of school. The Unified Champion Schools model combats this negativity by creating an environment of inclusivity, belonging, and community.
Research on UCS has affirmed its powerful impact, revealing that K-12 students who participate feel more supported by their teachers and peers, have higher levels of grit, receive better grades, and are more empathetic and compassionate than non-participants. Perhaps of greatest significance, these findings apply to typically developing students as well as to those with disabilities.
The results reported by UCS school and district leaders indicate that UCS creates more socially inclusive environments with a reduction in bullying, teasing, and use of offensive language. Along with improved student attendance, UCS personnel report positive academic outcomes such as increases in standardized test scores, grades, and graduation rates.
The UCS approach to inclusion also eases the transitions between elementary, middle, and high school for students with disabilities. Youth with and without ID report learning about working with others, helping others, being more patient, and standing up for something or someone. Unified clubs present opportunities for students to practice relationship skills and social awareness, and participants report realizing that they have many things in common with students of different abilities.
Relationships between students with and without ID are often viewed as a form of service to those in need. However, the impact is much deeper. The students without ID benefit in immeasurable ways as they learn to value each person for who they are, just the way they are. They learn that every person matters and can contribute, and they learn much about people and life through their interactions. UCS demonstrates that relationships built on mutual caring and appreciation can cross boundaries regardless of disabilities.
Not only does the UCS model create more caring and inclusive school environments but, as Harvard Graduate School of Education professor and researcher Stephanie Jones has found, it fosters an inclusive mindset in children and adults. That inclusive mindset enhances students’ ability to see things from another’s perspective, strengthens their courage to stand up for others, and supports their belief in the dignity of every individual.
HundrEDorg, a Finland-based global organization that identifies and acknowledges inspiring innovations in K–12 education, presented UCS with its Academy Choice Award in 2024, noting that “This innovation had the highest overall scores for impact and scalability.”
When combined with universal design for learning (UDL) and social-emotional learning (SEL)—two approaches already used in many schools—the impact of UCS is even greater. Special Olympics is now partnering with CAST, the organization that created the concept of UDL and works with schools to integrate UDL into instruction, in order to better extend the reach of UCS into the curricular life of the classroom. UDL recognizes that inability to learn is a problem that exists not in the student but rather in the traditional instructional design that fails to accommodate students’ natural variability. Accordingly, UDL enables teachers to personalize and customize instructional materials, learning engagement strategies, and demonstrations of learning—while upholding academic goals. By offering every student effective on-ramps through multiple means of representation, engagement, and expression, UDL fosters higher levels of achievement, more inclusive classrooms, and greater long-term success.
As of 2024, nearly 10,000 U.S. schools have joined the UCS network. Looking at the data another way, UCS programming is now being applied in at least one school in fully 25 percent of America’s school districts—a numerical milestone as well as a crucial tipping point. The growth has been exponential because of the power and meaningfulness all students—not just those with ID— experience in the program. These leading schools offer a roadmap for others to transform their school environments into places where each student is known, cared about, and valued, and where our common humanity undergirds the respect and compassion with which we treat each other.
In fact, UCS is helping adults see inclusion as an advantage for all children. Over time, the mindset of inclusion spreads from schools to families, then from families to their youth groups, gyms, and faith-based organizations. And from there, the change in outlook and attitude begins to extend throughout the community at large—and lives are forever changed. The inclusive mindset can and does carry over to other student “differences,” such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religion, helping schools and entire communities to combat bullying and intolerance wherever it appears.
UCS demonstrates most effectively that relationships and learning need not be limited by artificial labels, and that in recognizing our common humanity and dignity we lessen divisiveness and create a world of greater compassion and joy for all.